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“Come inside with me,” I ask her, and sometimes she comes, but she doesn’t stay long. Not the way she used to. I stop calling so often; it’s no fun to keep hoping, keep getting shot down. The space she filled in my days and my nights is glaringly open.

And Shorty’s got this band now, trying out for paying gigs it seems like every other day. If I run around to Ella’s place, to grab some dinner or whatever, all I get is an earful of what I should be doing differently with my life. As if it’s not all in my head and heart already; everything Papa ever said echoing like a chorus of little sentences that float through me in his deep, disappeared voice.

Up, up, you mighty race.

The Lord has great plans for you.

You can be anything, son. You’re going to preach and teach like I do, but better.

The more time that passes, the more impossible it all sounds. A mouthful of lies; things not worth thinking about or standing still for. So I’m on the move now. The train gig is where it’s at.

You have to learn to walk smooth, even as the train rocks back and forth beneath you. It’s a kind of balancing act. All the turns around the dance floor at the Roseland made me ready. I’m good on my feet now. Real steady.

This gig is the best slave I’ve ever had.

The kinds of people coming and going from Harlem make me want to get off the train and stay there. They’re the hippest cats I’ve ever seen, in nice pressed suits, looking sophisticated. And all the ladies look downright fine. Roxbury is old news, compared to the energy and excitement radiating from the Big Apple. I write home about how I’ve made it to the big time, with my hot new railroad slave and all the fancy people I rub elbows with.

Philbert seems especially interested in my travel gig. Troubled by it, I guess.
How are we supposed to know where you are?
he writes.
You’re moving all the time.
I never thought about it like that. I always know where my siblings are. They’re in Lansing. The idea that they think about me the same way is a bit funny, but I guess it makes sense.

I pull out my old map and carefully copy the outline of the states: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York. I mark dots for all the cities we stop in and label them, then draw two thick black lines like train tracks going through. I send Philbert the drawing.
Here I am
, I write, feeling real good about it. Funnily enough, the next time I’m on the route, I imagine my brother sitting at the dining table, staring at my rough-sketched map. I imagine his finger following me up and down the eastern seaboard, hovering right over my head the whole way. It makes me strangely happy.

My favorite moment of the train ride is going over the bridge into the city. The sprawling brick buildings of Harlem are laid out like a quilt beneath us. If you have a minute to spare, you can look down through the windows past the tracks and see people walking. Sitting. Riding. Sometimes they wave up at the train cars. I’m never sure if they can actually see me, so small in my high-up window, with the sun glaring against the glass to boot. But I wave back at them anyway.

Soon they promote me from dishwasher to sandwich guy. I walk the aisles every day with a tray of sandwiches, coffee, drinks, and snacks to sell to people at their seats.

Sometimes I can spend the night in Harlem between train runs. I whip off my uniform the second I get off duty. Slap on my zoot suit and head uptown.

Harlem is all that it promised to be. Music. Art. Jazz. A kind of celebration of blackness I have never seen or experienced. At least not since the days when Mom and Papa used to gather us in the living room and tell us things that Marcus Garvey and people like him had said.

I recognize 125th Street the first time I set foot on it. The Apollo Theater marquee stands out above the crowds, always announcing some exciting show coming up. I’d seen it in a photograph in the newspaper, the day after Joe Louis knocked out Jim Braddock and laid him on the mat to become heavyweight champion.

Lansing, 1937

That day Philbert and I raced home from school to listen to the match on the radio. It was only going to be the greatest boxing match in the history of the world: our favorite, Joe Louis, going up against the heavyweight champion of the world, Jim Braddock. Head to head. In the ring. To see who would be the new heavyweight champion.

Braddock was a hero in the ring, too. They called him Cinderella Man, because he starved through the Depression, like the rest of us, but somehow fought out of the darkness to become the champion. But Joe Louis was the Brown Bomber. The best boxer to ever step into the ring, and a Negro besides. Joe Louis was going to knock Braddock right out of his glass slippers, Philbert told me. Used to be, Negro boxers weren’t even allowed in the ring with whites. And now, Joe Louis was about to dominate, on the biggest stage in the sport.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” Philbert called. “The fight’s about to start!” He pounded on my shoulder blades.

“Coming,” I said. We sparred as we jogged up the lane. Philbert got in front of me, trying to cut me off. Philbert was always the better fighter; it was all I could do to keep my fists in the right place.

“I can take you,” I bluffed. “I’ve gotten good. You haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve gotten real good.”

“Oh, right,” Philbert said. “That’s likely.”

I spread my arms out wide. “Who are you talking to?”

Philbert took the opportunity to deck me hard in the stomach. “My dumb-as-a-rock kid brother.”

I groaned, doubling over. “Give me a break, man.”

He started hopping around, all fleet of foot. “I’m gonna get real good,” he said. “Then I’m gonna get real big, and I’m gonna follow right behind Joe Louis.”

I laughed. “Well, yeah, the place to be is behind Joe Louis. So he can knock down anybody you might have to fight.”

Philbert grinned. Couldn’t help himself. He darted toward me and popped me lightly in the jaw. “You lug.”

I rubbed my cheek. “Don’t mess with this face.”

Philbert snorted. “A broken jaw would be an improvement, bro.”

“Hey,” I protested. We skidded into the living room and tumbled onto the rug in front of the radio. It was a few feet to the side of the fireplace and half as tall, propped up on a small wooden table. We crouched in front of it.

Philbert played with the radio dial. The static blipped and focused as the stations turned. We caught a snatch of voices. Philbert slowed and got more careful with his finger.

“. . . fight we’ve all been waiting for . . .”

“There! Go back,” I said.

“I heard it, I heard it,” Philbert said. But he scrolled too far, too fast. Static again.

I batted his hands away. “Let me do it.”

“I got it.” He inched the dial with just the tip of his finger.

“. . . in the ring now . . . Louis . . . Braddock . . .”

“There! There.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Philbert said, making the final adjustments to minimize static.

“First round getting under way now. . . .”

Good. We hadn’t missed much.

“Fighters circling. . . . Braddock gets the first hit in. . . .”

Through the speaker, we could hear the fighters’ footsteps on the pads. The
thump
and
oofs
of contact. Skin and gloves. Smacking. Connecting. Pushing off to circle again.

The radio crackled over the voices and the murmur of the crowd and the occasional
ding
of the round bell.

“Louis pummels Braddock . . . left, right . . . quite a beating. . . . Braddock pops Louis . . . a right to the stomach. . . . Louis down!”

We groaned loud.

“No, he’s up, he’s up! Just a knockdown, more of a stumble, really. . . . This fight is far from over. . . .”

Our ears were inches from the speaker. Philbert’s breath on my neck.

DING.

We sighed and pulled back. I shook out my hands. How could I be sweating this much when I wasn’t even in the ring? Philbert, too, was wiping sweat off his brow. Rooting for Joe Louis just put us out of our minds. He had to win this fight. He had to. “He’s going to do it,” Philbert said. “Just you watch.”

Every punch, every jab, every time those gloves connected, it felt like we had thrown the punch ourselves. Like we were part of it. It was like somebody out there had to be fighting. Somebody had to have his fists up, because not everyone found it so easy — or even possible.

We hung on, on edge, through eight long rounds of the fight. Then . . .

“A left to the shoulder. Right to the jaw. . . . Braddock stumbles. Braddock’s down! Braddock’s down!”

We cheered. But briefly, silencing ourselves so we didn’t miss anything.
“And the count is up. Two . . . three . . . four . . .”

I held my breath. Next to me, Philbert moved his arms, replaying the fight. I’m sure he was playing Louis in his mind. Jab. Jab. Uppercut. Watch the other man fall. The white man.

“Braddock is stirring. . . .”

My fingers dug into the matted edges of the rug. Hold on. Hold on.

“Five . . . six . . . seven . . .”

Please. Please.

“Down for the count! Louis wins! Joe Louis is the heavyweight champion of the world. Louis wins! Louis wins!”

We leaped up, screaming. “Louis wins! Louis wins!”

The announcement continued, but it didn’t matter what anyone said after that. Victory! Louis wins!

Never mind that I couldn’t dance to save my life. I was jivin’. We all were. A victory for Joe Louis was a victory for all of us.

In the morning, Philbert and I ran down to the newsstand to see the coverage. There was a big photo of Harlem people, cheering Louis’s victory, on 125th Street that night. Right in front of the Apollo Theater.

Harlem, 1942

Five years later, and now I’m standing in that very spot. If that photo were taken today, I’d be in it. The thought astounds me.

When it’s time to leave the city for a northbound run, it hurts to look out the train window. I can barely stomach the overwhelming longing I feel to return there. Like a beacon tugging in a way I haven’t felt since . . . I don’t remember ever feeling this way about a place. Like it’s gonna be home.

Sophia calls me up one night, my night off from the train. “I miss you, baby,” she croons. I hear her voice, and I know. She still has my heart, sure enough.

“I know I haven’t called in a while,” I say. “I’ve been busy.”

“I could come over, if you want,” she offers. “I really miss you.”

“You wanna go out?” I ask.

“I just want to see you,” she whispers. It makes my heart beat special.

“Well, come on, then.”

She’s in my arms like a flash. Like old times. “Let’s not be apart anymore,” she says.

“It was your idea,” I remind her.
I would have loved you forever, through anything.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “That night . . . it really scared me, you know? But I do love you.”

“I love you, too.” Like a trapdoor. Like a box. Once you’re in, you’re in.

“I just want . . .” she starts. “Let’s try to forget it ever happened, all right? Some people are just . . . Let’s try to forget about them.”

“OK.” I don’t see any reason to tell her that I have some experience with putting people out of my mind. You can try to forget, but some things get written on you anyway.

I light us a reefer, and we lie in bed passing it back and forth. “You should come with me to Harlem sometime,” I tell her. “You’d love it there.”

“Maybe sometime,” she says.

“It’s like Roxbury, but . . . more,” I explain. “It’s amazing.”

She rolls over me, spreading herself against my chest. “People like us, if we’re going to be together, we have to keep it to ourselves, you know?”

“I know.” It just isn’t how I wanted it to be. That’s, I guess, what hurts. I convinced myself it was different. That we could be different. Or, at least, I could. Somehow, I got to believing that because Sophia loves me, we are the same. But I’m not like my mom, so light-skinned that a conk does the trick and you can go incognito. I’m a nigger if ever there was one. And everyone I try to love gets taken away because of it.

Harlem, fall 1942

The Savoy Ballroom is massive, even compared to the Roseland back in Boston: an expanse of waxed dance floor positively stuffed with Lindy Hoppers dancing elbow to elbow. Every one of them looks classy, dressed to the nines. I’m going to need something more classic than my snappy sharkskin zoot. A better hat maybe. And some of the newfangled, colorful shoes the guys are wearing, called Florsheims.

Lionel Hampton is playing, and the place is jiving and hopping. I’m lost in a swirl of pretty women, and I go on ahead and dance with as many as I can.

Then the singer comes out.

First we just hear finger snaps from out of the deep black stage. Then the fresh soft strains of jazz blues, like waking up from a long sleep. The single tone draws itself out like the stretching of arms. A ripple of notes, smoothly dissonant, with the
ch-ch-ch, ch-ch-ch
of sticks on cymbals. A cool blue spotlight captures swirling dust like visible chords. She steps into the light, beautiful and dark as ebony.